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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25656538">O Quynh, Quynh</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kishuku/pseuds/kishuku'>kishuku</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Those Who Hurt You Most [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Graphic description of torture, Mentions of Rape</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:35:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,964</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25656538</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kishuku/pseuds/kishuku</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Quynh hasn't been trapped for 500 years, just 200 years or so. So what's she been up to for the last 300 years? She sits down with Booker and tells him a story.</p><p>Once upon a time....</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Those Who Hurt You Most [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860232</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>O Quynh, Quynh</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Follow up fic to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25380223">The Immortal Dead</a>. You don't have to read the previous story to understand what's going on, but it explains the situation Booker and Nicky find themselves in.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“But Nile and I dreamed of you and you were still… you were still trapped.”</p><p>Quynh smiled. No, rather it was a motion where she stretched her lips into something that attempted to masquerade as one.</p><p>“You’ve been dreaming my nightmares. My old nightmares, the new ones I haven’t had a chance to share with you yet,” Quynh purred. “And I <i>do</i> want to share them.”</p><p>“With Andy?” Booker asked, gun still raised.</p><p>Quynh nodded, her lips still stretched out.</p><p>“What makes you think I’ll let you anywhere near Andy?” Booker was lunging forward before he even finished the question, but Quynh was moving too.</p><p>She grasped a handful of Nicky’s too long hair at the back of his head and shoved—no <i>flung</i>—Nicky at Booker. It happened too quickly, Booker’s fingers pulled the trigger and he saw the bullet strike Nicky just before the man crashed into him, dragging his shooting arm down to the ground with his weight.</p><p>The fight was almost a joke after that. Quynh had over three thousand—or was it four thousand?—years of hand to hand to combat experience. Booker hadn’t even been alive for a thousand.</p><p>After she launched Nicky at Booker, Quynh spun around her living shield and with a single kick, destroyed Booker’s knee with a crunch. Booker screamed as a hard strike smashed into his side and felt the snap of a rib. As he pitched forward in pain the heel of Quynh’s palm rose up to meet his face and Booker died as the cartilage of his nose was driven up into his brain.</p><p>~~</p><p>
  <i>There was a hole inside him, everything about him felt empty. It wasn’t just his heart that was missing, it was all hollow and numb. At his core he was a black hole, nothing could fill the sorrow and the emptiness he had.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Everything ended in blood and in violence. They all knew there was only one way their lives would all end. Those who live by the sword, die by it. Yet they had lived in denial, or delusion for hundreds of years, thinking this day would never come.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>They were destined to meet.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>They were destined to love.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>One of them was always destined to be left behind in this living, endless Hell without the other.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Someone was screaming, raw and hopeless. Was that him?</i>
</p><p>~~</p><p>Booker jerked awake with a gasp. He was lying on the mattress in the living room with his hands and feet zip tied behind him. Nicky was unconscious or dead on the couch next to him, his eyes open, blank, and staring. The front of his shirt was stained red with blood where Booker had accidentally shot him.</p><p>“Sorry about that. I forgot to dose him, the screaming startled me. It is so much more excruciating in real life,” Quynh murmured.</p><p>Booker snorted, then blew through his nose, congealed gelatinous blood from his healed nose splattering the mattress. He coughed, “How much….. How much did you give him?”</p><p>“Does it matter?” Quynh gave him a genuinely curious look as she held up an empty vial and wiggled it at him.</p><p>Booker muttered a few choice curses under his breath, but he supposed she was right. “I don’t want to run out. I don’t know where we’d get more if we ran out.”</p><p>Quynh cocked her head to the side for a moment in consideration, “I suppose it is more merciful than keeping him dead.” She said in that soft sing-song voice. “So when is Andy coming back?”</p><p>Booker shook his head, “I don’t know.”</p><p>Quynh sighed, then stood up and went into the kitchen. She came back a second later with a knife and the salt shaker. All of her motions were businesslike as she flipped Booker onto his back and cut off his shirt. Then she started carving into his chest with the knife, digging deep pockets into the flesh parts, then pouring salt into the bloody gaps. She pressed down on the wounds, holding in the salt, until it bubbled out around her fingers in bloody rivers as Booker’s body attempted to purge itself of the poison. She shoved the remnants of his shirt into his mouth when he couldn’t help but start screaming.</p><p>“You’re probably wondering why I’m angry at Andy. After all, it wasn’t really her fault. That’s what you’re thinking,” Quynh idly carved at Booker’s shoulder.</p><p>“But I haven’t been down there in the ocean for 500 years. Seawater is incredibly corrosive after all. I managed to crawl out of that metal coffin after two hundred years. Two hundred years,” Quynh’s eyes flashed with the memories. “That’s about how long you’ve been alive, isn’t it? Two hundred years of sitting on the ocean floor with crabs, fish, and who knows what else burrowing into my flesh and nibbling away at me. You think drowning and resurrecting every 5 minutes was a nightmare? The nightmare was knowing there were things eating and living inside my flesh. The nightmare was being unable to hold a single thought in your head for longer than a minute because you were busy dying every single second.”</p><p>She stabbed the knife down to the bone in Booker’s shoulder, his body thrashing with the pain and his forehead banging into her knee where she sat next to him. She wiggled the blade around, boring down into the bone.</p><p>“When is Andy coming back?” she asked again.</p><p>He shook his head, choking on the shirt in his mouth.</p><p>Quynh jerked the knife free and started carving bloody strips from Booker’s arm. “I floated around for a while after breaking free, and then a ship for the Dutch East India Company spotted me.” Her mouth twisted into that grimace that was a mockery of a smile, “My first human contact in two hundred years. A ship with about two hundred sailors and a hundred soldiers all bound for India. I was completely naked when they fished me out of the ocean and my mongrel Dutch out of date by a hundred years.</p><p>“They kept me. Chained me beneath deck between two cannons and violated me. Every single day. Do you know how long it takes to sail from Europe to India?” her eyes flashed with hatred. “A year, if you’re lucky. More than a year if storms delay the trip.” Quynh paused to watch Booker’s arm knit itself back together before she peeled off another strip of flesh and added it to the growing pile next to them. The mattress was now completely soaked with Booker’s blood. “I made that trip six times.”</p><p>Booker looked up at Nicky. Eyes open, watching, but forgotten on the couch. </p><p><i>Wake up, Nicky. Save me!</i> he thought.</p><p>Quynh made a deep cut just under the left side of Booker’s ribs. “When is Andy coming back?” she gently slipped her fingers into the gap, not allowing his body to close up.</p><p>He couldn’t move, couldn’t even shake his head. He could only pant and suck air desperately through his nose as the white hot pain and the echo of phantom pain radiated from his arm.</p><p>“We were on some tiny rock of an island, somewhere near Taiwan, when they sold me to Japanese pirates.” Quynh smiled and wiggled her fingers inside Booker, sliding them in deeper as flesh tore. She played with the wound as though she was attempting to bring a woman to orgasm, stroking the edge of the hole with her thumb and rubbing her fingers deep inside him. He screamed then, the sounds muffled and swallowed up by his shirt. “Men with power over a woman are all the same, no matter how you slice it.</p><p>“I was passed around from ship to ship, sometimes traded and sometimes something to be claimed after a raid. I was finally with one ship long enough that they discovered my secret. <i>Our secret.</i>”</p><p>Booker felt her fingers pressing against his lung, he knew because it was suddenly more difficult to breath as Quynh slowly pushed her fist up into his ribcage. “Mm, you’re so warm Sebastien.”</p><p>She flexed her hand, opening her fist and stretching her fingers open as far as she could inside him.</p><p>The pain was so sharp, burning like a white hot flare deep inside him, Booker passed out.</p><p>Quynh was murmuring again when he woke up again, her arm still buried in his chest.</p><p>“You know what those stupid fishermen and pirates thought I was? They thought I was a mermaid,” Quynh threw her head back and laughed, it had more than just a tinge of madness to it. “And in Japan there’s a legend that says if you <i>eat</i> a mermaid’s flesh you become immortal!” She laughed again as though it was the funniest joke she’d ever heard. Quynh laughed until she was gasping for breath and raised her free hand to dab at the tears in her eyes, she left bloody streaks on her cheeks.</p><p>“They carved me up and ate slivers of my flesh for over a hundred years! And none of those stupid simpletons ever achieved immortality,” she giggled. “Although a few of them who got too close died. I can still chew a man’s throat out no matter how many times they ripped my teeth out of my skull! They thought that would keep them safe.” She slid her arm further up.</p><p>“Oh Booker, I think I’ve found your heart! You do have one!” she purred.</p><p>Nicky suddenly stirred, eyes blinking rapidly as he attempted to push himself up into a sitting position.</p><p>“Oh bother,” Quynh said as she pulled her arm from Booker’s body with a wet sucking slurp. He inhaled, eyes rolling in pain as his insides shifted and wove themselves back together.</p><p>She stood and snatched up a vial and syringe with her bloody hands, Quynh glanced at Booker. She reached down and pulled the bloody shirt rag from his mouth, “How much?” Quynh held the vial out so Booker could squint at it.</p><p>“Two mL,” he croaked out, his throat torn ragged with screaming.</p><p>She nodded, drew up the amount, and then jammed the needle into Nicky’s throat. Booker winced, but Nicky didn’t even whimper, his eyes just slid shut.</p><p>“When is Andy coming back?” Quynh asked again.</p><p>“I don’t know,” Booker jerked back when she reached for him. “I honestly don’t know!” he hated that his voice cracked with panic. “She and Nile are cleaning up their last mission. I don’t even know if they’ll be coming back to this safe house!” he got out in a rush. <i>Please don’t hurt me anymore,</i> his mind shrieked.</p><p>Quynh smiled, “Good boy.” She patted him on the cheek, leaving that side of his face cold and wet with his own blood. She knelt down next to him again, the bloody mattress squishing beneath her weight. “Will they call you?”</p><p>“Maybe,” he said evasively.</p><p>“Oh, Booker,” she sighed. “I’m so disappointed.” She stabbed him with the needle and when he opened his mouth to scream, she shoved the shirt rag back between his teeth.</p><p>Hours later Quynh killed him and allowed him to regenerate in peace.</p><p>When Booker opened his eyes again he was still in Hell. Quynh had removed the rag from his mouth again and he gently worked his jaw from side to side in an attempt to stretch the abused muscles.</p><p>“How did you escape?” he asked.</p><p>“Hm?” Quynh was eating a piece of bread from Booker’s groceries with bloody hands.</p><p>He coughed, cleared his throat and tried again, “You were in Japan. They thought you were a mermaid. How did you escape?”</p><p>“Oh, you want an ending to the story? Wouldn’t you be happier if I told you ‘and they lived happily ever after’?” Quynh smirked, a soft snort of air delicately passing through her nose.</p><p>“If that were true, you wouldn’t be here,” Booker pointed out.</p><p>“Oh, all right. I suppose stories all deserve some sort of ending,” Quynh sat down next to Booker again, ignoring the mess she’d made of the mattress. He’d also pissed himself sometime in the last hour or so, the rank stench of urine mingled with the iron tang of copious amounts of blood in the air.</p><p>“The family that eventually inherited me kept me hidden on an island, Okunoshima. Ever heard of it?” she asked.</p><p>Booker shook his head.</p><p>“Today it’s known as Bunny Island.”</p><p>Oh, that island Booker had heard of.</p><p>“Nowadays, tourists go there to see the rabbits, oh wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.” Quynh paused, rearranging her thoughts. “There were only three fishing families living on Okunoshima at the time, then during WWII the Imperial Japanese Army Institute of Science and Technology took over the island. Although I didn’t know that then, it was something I learned later,” she gave a one shouldered shrug. “The government was going to use the island to develop poisonous gases for the war effort.”</p><p>Booker suddenly regretted he’d asked to hear the rest of the story.</p><p>“I was discovered when they raided the fishing families forcing them off the island yet the Imperial Army wasn’t as interested in my immortality as they were in testing the poisonous gases on me. Mustard gas, bromine, poisonous chlorine, phosgene, aerosol arsenic, pentafluoride….” Quynh recited the list in sing song voice. “The head scientist told me that I was their little darling, their ‘child of morality’. That’s what Noriko means in Japanese. Their stupid pet name for me,” Quynh smirked. “To those soulless ghouls, I represented the morals Japanese scientists left behind in order to achieve victory for their country. I was their lab rat for nearly four years.</p><p>“Then the Americans were coming,” Quynh closed her eyes for a moment, reliving a memory only she could see. “The Americans brought bombs and fire and death,” she shivered. “The lab had to be evacuated. I was packed into a cage and shipped to the main island. That’s where I escaped,” Quynh’s eyes were bright with memories and madness. “They moved me and some of their more precious supplies to a location in the center of the city underneath a military factory.”</p><p>Booker swallowed, “The center of the city? The center of Hiroshima?”</p><p>“Yes!” Quynh showed an excited eagerness she hadn’t all day. “Oh yes! That’s how I escaped! The world was suddenly incinerated, everything and everyone around me. My cage and my jailers all gone in a flash. It was beautiful!” her eyes and expression were wistful. “I felt my flesh singed off my bones in an instant, the blood vaporizing out of my veins, and my entire being reduced to radioactive dust. It was <i>wonderful,</i>” she sighed.</p><p>Booker stared at her in horror. To live through all that?</p><p>“How long before…. Before you woke up again?” he asked.</p><p>She shrugged. “Not important. I woke up and I was free. The taste of freedom is like nothing I can describe, but you can’t appreciate it until you’ve had it taken from you for five hundred years.”</p><p>Quynh’s eyes blazed, “And I will take that from Andromache. She owes me five hundred years of life!”</p><p>Booker hesitated then took a breath and said, “I think Andy would give you those years if she could but I don’t think she has that many years left to give.”</p><p>“What?” the madness seemed to waver for a moment, warring with a glimpse of concern and maybe love?</p><p>“Andy’s lost her immortality.”</p><p>“No,” the madness was back full force. Booker realized he’d made a mistake. “No!” Quynh lunged forward, lifting him by his neck with both hands. She was shorter than him, so when she knelt and clutched him by the neck his body still hung at a crazy slant, his knees, ankles, and wrists still bound together. “You’re lying! You’re fucking lying!” she screamed into his face, spittle flecking his beard.</p><p>Booker felt the cartilage of his windpipe crunch under Quynh’s thumbs as she squeezed. She kept squeezing, he felt her thumbs dig into his carotid artery, blood pumping down his throat into his lungs and his stomach to the rhythm of his panicked heart. His legs flopped as he struggled, he wasn’t able to find any purchase on the soft mattress or to even get his knees underneath him.</p><p>When he awoke, again, he was downstairs in the basement. Nicky sat on the floor, slumped against the wall. Quynh was carefully injecting more drugs into Nicky, this time using his IV line.</p><p>She’d showered and changed. Not a single trace of the torture she’d inflicted on him lingered on her skin. Whereas he was still a stinking mess.</p><p>“Booker,” she turned to him happily. “I’ve made some preparations! I thought you would wake up sooner, but I think I broke your neck when I threw you down the stairs.”</p><p>He took a good look around the room then. When he’d first walked through it the room had been empty, now the single light bulb illuminated every knife, pole, and small unidentifiable bottles Quynh had brought downstairs and lined the walls with. There was also a drain in the center of the room Booker hadn’t noticed before. She’d set up a torture chamber.</p><p>The nausea slammed into him with the force of a fully loaded semi-truck. He vomited, brown-black blood drooling from his mouth and oozing towards the drain. Quynh ignored him and the new mess he’d created.</p><p>“I think Andromache is going to contact you, so until she does I am going to break you,” Quynh smiled, the madness lighting up the smile. “I am going to break your loyalty. I am going to make you learn to obey me.” She pointed a finger up, “What we did there? I was gentle.</p><p>“Let’s begin.”</p>
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